Monday, February 6, 2012

Ben Casey and Dazzler Writer

I worked out Carl Memling's writing style by finding the writer who worked on both Jungle War Stories and Ghost Stories at Dell; the Who's Who has him listed on those two.

For a doctor series like Dell's Ben Casey TV tie-in, ambulance sirens are just as helpful in determining the writer as the police car sirens in Adam-12. Memling's sirens go "Rowrrr," whereas Paul S. Newman's go "Areeeee," John Warner's "Whee-eee," and Leo Dorfman's "Howwweeee."

The Who's Who lists both Frank McLaughlin and Dick Giordano as Ben Casey inkers. Giordano may be helping on the ones where I see mostly McLaughlin work.

I didn't list the single-page featurettes (they may or may not have been written by Memling), but Norman J. Nodel initialed the inside back cover of #4, "They Were First," as "NJN," as he likewise initialed Bachelor Father and Barbie and Ken pages. Here's a sequence from that issue's Ben Casey story; recall that Nodel drew a certain spy movie adaptation in 1962...

Ben Casey—Written by Carl Memling

July/62

#1

The Man Who Hated the World...

a: Norman Nodel

Oct/62

#2

Bite the Hand...

a: Nodel

Dec/62

#3

The Killing

a: Nodel

Feb/63

#4

Terror at 59 West

a: Nodel

Apr/63

#5

Fight Fire with Ice...

a: Nodel

June/63

#6

Three against Tiberius

a: Gene Colan

Oct/63

#7

One Second...to Disaster

p: John Tartaglione i: Vince Colletta

Jan/64

#8

You Could Die Laughing

a: Colan

Dec/64

#9

The Troubler Maker

p: Tartaglione i: Frank McLaughlin

Aug/65

#10

Danger on the Ward

p: Tartaglione i: McLaughlin

The Dazzler I mentioned in the post title isn't Marvel's Disco Dazzler. The Ben Casey back-up series stars a young intern.

The GCD suggests Vince Colletta as penciller as well as inker on #7's Dazzler story (it certainly isn't Tartaglione), but since I've never seen Colletta's pencils that I know of, I can't say yes or no.

darkmark, I let the first chapter title stand for the three-parter's title in both 9 and 10; Memling, Tartaglione, and McLaughlin did the entire issues. If those sections could be read out of order and the issue still make any sense, I'd agree that they're stories; but they're so interconnected that they didn't register on me as anything but chapters, unnumbered as in any number of Dell comics. Sorry for the confusion!

SangorShop, I've been looking for Carl Memling's 50s work at ME and such, but so far I've come up short. I guess I haven't seen enough issues--so far it's been just some of AC's reprints.

Martin - try the Digital Comic Museum out (use the preview button to just read the story). The Jolly Jim Dandy stories are said to be by Melming. http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=6392then try Ghost Rider and B-Bar-B.